Electronic mail systems and discussion boards allow individuals to communicate with one another. The electronic mail (e-mail) messages are delivered to an individual's account or displayed on a discussion board. The messages can be organized into discussion threads. U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20050138121, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses a discussion resource forum where the topics are organized into threads and the postings under a single thread are considered related. Similarly, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20030014482, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses a community-based collaborative knowledge system which threads related messages.
In addition to electronic mail systems, the use of a document management system is well known in the art. U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20060085516, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses a method and apparatus combining an e-mail system and a document management system by e-mailing an image that the document management system manages. It is well known in the art that e-mail messages are often sent with documents attached called attachments. U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20030041112, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety discloses a computerized document management system which stores electronic mail and extracts and stores the attachments. However, the document management systems do not organize the attachments, nor do they establish a relationship between attachments.
The disclosure contained herein describes the methods of resolving one or more of the problems discussed above.